Nightmare Shores
by paradoxed
Summary: An eternal guardian maintains a fluctuating world of night and poison. He doesn't get many visitors. But the moon has risen. Percy isn't happy that she's back.
1. In Your Dreams

_Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. - Edgar Allan Poe_

* * *

Percy ambles through his forest.

For the moment, it is made of bones. The leaves are hands that claw at the air, the branches carrying them fused humeri and femurs. The trunks are interwoven ribcages and cartilage, dense and unyielding, and the roots thick lengths of slimy spines.

The sky glows black, as it always does. The wind moans—softer than the usual screaming. And the clouds, way off past the void, are freshly exsanguinated.

He finds the tallest tree sitting on a pile of granite boulders. The behemoth's roots twist through the rocks, creating a web of spines that bars the way in.

Time to start again.

Percy draws a hilt of ice from his back pocket. The air warps, sucking out all color from his surroundings with a savage rasp. For a moment, all movement ceases.

Then he cuts, the emptiness before the hilt bisects the unnatural life. Color and movement return to the world with a dragging screech as the vertebrae shrivel and rot, revealing a damp corridor.

A primal roar tears the air, reminiscent of the death throes of a sacrificial bull. The earth rumbles and reverberates as a one-man stampede begins.

Percy's mouth quirks. "Once more unto the breach, bud."

* * *

Percy emerges from underground through a crevasse. Horns in hand, he'd felt an influx of cold air and seen the luminous black sky far above. Naturally, he stabbed his way up. Endless rock had given way to ice a mile ago, which made the final stretch of the trip much easier.

With one last lunge, stab, and pull, Percy drags himself over the edge to meet the howling wind. Turning around, he tosses the horns back whence they came, then sits, legs dangling over the long drop as he rubs his frosted hands together.

Percy looks across the crevasse, the direction he'd come. A mountain range of ice greets him, the skeleton forest nowhere in sight. But there's always a forest. There has to be. It's his forest, after all.

The wind turns hot, bathing his back with a swarm of cinders. He turns around to see a valley of ash below him. The trees stand proud and tall, all dead gray and smoldering orange. And … flashing silver?

He spies a smear of yellow-white in the sky. He frowns. It shouldn't be here, but he knows why it is.

Percy steps forward, then pauses to look back. A dense swath of charcoal trees greets him, a ditch and a mound the only evidence of the mountain and ravine. He's already in the forest. He never left.

The wind circles him, laughing.

He strolls toward the silver light.

* * *

Percy hears the music first. A chorus of flutes serenades the forest, majestic and cheerful and mournful and all too alien in this nightmare.

Then he hears the shrieking. Much more familiar. Then metal clashing with bone. Too familiar.

The sound and light guide him through the woodland of ash and ember to a clearing. He finds a young woman dressed in silver fighting a blessing of unicorns—though he'd rather call these a pack.

He doesn't remember unicorns having dozens of branches on their horn, but these do. The horns are longer than he is tall, with far too many short sharp hollow protrusions that sing or screech through the air as the unicorns charge the girl. And he doesn't remember unicorns having teeth sharp enough to give wolves a run for their prey.

There's six of them, circling the woman, taking turns to charge at her before returning to their trot. Some of the unicorns have ichor in their muzzle or horns. But seven unicorn corpses lie here and there, most with silver arrows deep in their eye or chest or neck.

The monsters haven't noticed him yet, but the woman has. She turns in place, combat knives out and ready and bloody. The corpses at her feet are still twitching, heart beating precious lifeblood out deep cuts in their crippled legs and sliced throats. Her eyes dilate when she meets his gaze, a moment of surprise before they dart away, keeping track of her attackers.

It could've been Hecate. Cerridwen, perhaps, or Khonsu. Maybe even Chang'e. And he hasn't seen Tsukuyomi in ages.

But none of them end up here as often as Artemis.

She won't like this. She never had before.

As another unicorn bears down on the moon goddess, Percy draws the ice hilt once more. As Artemis eviscerates their fellow unicorn, the rest of the pack turns to look at him as their screeching song is sucked from the world. They flee, abandoning their comrade to the Huntress's mercies, or lack thereof.

The goddess turns on him as soon as she's certain the unicorn is dead. "I didn't need your help, boy."

"No, you didn't." Percy nods as he slides the hilt back in his pocket. He hides the satisfaction that wells up within when she blinks, startled. "But I'm not here to help you."

"Then what are you here for?" Her eyes cut through his soul, her lips twisting with distaste. "Who are you, boy?"

"I am here because you don't belong here," he says, ignoring the pit of memories in his chest. "Because this place is a dream, and so am I."

Artemis scoffs and turns back to her most recent kill. She wipes the blood off her blades on the corpse's soft fur with a few deft strokes. "If you're going to lie, at least say something plausible."

Percy chuckles, taking a step forward. In a flash of silver, the goddess appears before him, her knives in his throat and heart. "Mortals," she sneers, "are not allowed to witness my hunt."

"Mortal?" Percy's chuckle becomes a laugh as he steps closer and drives the knives deeper into and through his body. "Do your senses deceive you, Artemis?"

A strangled yelp escapes the goddess as she lets go and retreats to the next corpse. She yanks arrows free from the body and materializes a bow from nothing, drawing upon him. "What are you?"

"Didn't I say?" Percy says through the knife in his throat, blood dribbling from his wry smile. "I'm a dream." An arrow sprouts in his right eye. " _And dreams aren't mortal_."

His heart aches around the other knife. That look of suspicion and fear—it always begins like this. She never changes.

She never remembers.

"You can't hurt me," Percy continues, yanking the arrow free. The hole weeps black pitch—he blinks—the tears are gone and his eye is back, iris glowing poisonous green. He throws the arrow to the side and tears out the knives with a hiss. Then the mortal wounds are gone, and his bloody clothes immaculate once more; the only hint of anything unnatural is the sound of squirming. He tosses the blades to Artemis's feet. "So you may as well stop trying to kill me."

Artemis stares, the string of her bow tightening, drawn back further. "Gods don't dream."

Percy laughs again, sharp and mocking. He spreads his arms, gesturing to the dead woods. "You're in a place where you're stuck in your body, not able to shapeshift or teleport." He takes a step towards her, his smile widening as her frown deepens.

"You're in a place you don't recognize, a forest unknown to even the Huntress." Another step. She scowls, the silver bow creaking in her grip.

"You're in a place where monsters bleed and die and decay." Step. Her gaze turns to the unicorn corpses, and her brow furrows.

"So maybe I did lie." Percy shrugs, his smile fading as he stops, yards away. His eyes become ice, black and unforgiving. "You're not in a dream, Artemis. You're in a nightmare."

Then, without a single movement, they're face to face, as if the space between them had never existed. She freezes—any other being would've run, but she's too proud to step back. That tension in her core, that fire in her soul … it's as he remembered: fight or fight.

Her silver eyes flicker, reflecting the floating embers. She unnocks the arrow and lowers her bow. "Then are you also my nightmare?"

Percy blinks. Then, for the first time in ages, he laughs with genuine amusement. "Now you're getting it."

"Hello, Lady Artemis." He bows. "Perseus, at your service."


	2. Are We There Yet?

_Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you. - John Irving_

* * *

He didn't make sense.

He appeared without warning—Artemis should've sensed him long before she saw him, even distracted by her hunt. She caught but a glimpse of him, a shadow in the burning woods as the shadhavar circled her. Then, as she slew yet another, the remainder of the pack ran away, their screaming song fading into the wind. It was possible she had finally killed enough of their number that her prey chose to flee rather than fight. Possible, but improbable. It was more likely he was responsible.

Yet when she turned on him he was too relaxed. When she accused him he was too composed. His manner, his response was too familiar. Arrogant.

When she peered at his soul … he was human. Completely, utterly human.

So she asked him who he was. He spouted nonsense.

Artemis didn't bother with her usual methods to dispose of him. He didn't deserve that honor.

He didn't bother with dying.

Knives in throat and heart. Spinal cord severed, heart divided. An undeserving quick end. But he still moved, still spoke. An arrow through the eye, into the brain. But he still saw, still lived.

The arrow was pulled out with a yank, covered with black bile. The promise of the void within disappeared beneath a blink, leaving only a poisonous glare. The knives were wrenched free, tearing and twisting the clean stabs into a visceral mess that sprayed gore-

The wounds were gone. They were never there.

A mortal would've died. An immortal would've dissolved to dust and spoil.

He claimed he was a dream.

She was starting to believe him.

* * *

His name was Perseus.

The name struck a chord in her soul, ringing a truth muddled and misremembered. It spoke of past victory and present tragedy, of a storm none could stop, let alone comprehend.

Artemis followed in his wake, observing his every movement.

His steps landed confident and relaxed, but Artemis saw the readiness for action that belied every muscle. Yet for all his certainty, she could not see where he planned to go. The mocking yellow moon remained unmoving overhead. Polar north shifted around them when they walked towards it. They traveled miles, but ahead and all around she sensed miles more of only charcoaled trees and blistering ash, with no end to the smoking ruin.

Her observations were at a standstill. Artemis frowned. There was no other recourse available. Quiet but pointed, she asked, "Where are we going?"

"Where we must," Perseus answered, lazy and unhurried. His voice lacked the undercurrent of strength that had surfaced earlier. He wasn't trying to convince her, which was sufficient for her to accept the veracity of his statement.

Not that she was happy with his answer. "How far away is this place?"

She heard his smile. "Probably just around the corner."

Artemis tapped at the knife sheathed at her thigh. "Is my … waking not an _urgent_ matter?"

Perseus shrugged, not bothering to turn around. Her fingers wrapped around the knife handle. Before she could provide any encouragement, he ducked around a tree, disappearing from view.

The goddess clenched her teeth and sped up, wrapping around the tree-

-and ran into Perseus, waiting for her in a forest of stone.

Artemis spun around, looking behind her. Granite sequoias greeted her, standing miles tall as if they'd grown for millennia before petrifying over eons.

Her knife fell loose from slackened fingers, skittering on the metamorphic rock that had seconds before been loose dirt.

She turned and reached out, running her hand over the tree they had circled. The trunk—once a foot wide and burned black and hollow—was now wider and sturdier than her throne. Her breath hitched as her fingers met the monolith, catching the grooves and bumps in the frigid bark. She shivered as her senses caught up with her, the chill piercing through the haze of heat from moments before.

Artemis turned back to Perseus and froze, finding him right beside her, amusement sparkling in his eyes and smile. She looked down to find him offering her her knife, handle first, the silver blade flashing a sickly crimson. She glanced upward, and an enormous blood moon throbbed in the darkness, mocking her with its unnatural radiance.

"You'll get used to it," her tormentor said. "You'll have to."

"What happened?" Artemis asked. She ignored the knife in his hand, glaring into his eyes.

Perseus scrunched his nose and withdrew the knife. "You're fighting the nightmare." He jiggled the knife, finding its balance point. "You're analyzing it. Defining it. Trying to pick it apart. It doesn't like that."

His hand darted out, sending a silver blur revolving away in a single sinuous movement. "So the moment you stop paying attention, it slips through your fingers and seizes you once more. It comes back with hordes of monsters even you wouldn't know."

A screech sliced through the air, accompanied by the hissing chorus of dying serpents, which was cut off by a meaty thud. Perseus's smile perverts. A hint of madness lit his eyes and a chill ran down her spine. "And maybe you survive. Then it happens all over again."

He turned away and walked towards the source of the disturbance. Artemis blinked. She glanced at the tree under her fingers one last time before hurrying after Perseus. He was much farther away than he could have walked in that short moment, crouched over a humanoid corpse.

She stopped a healthy distance away from Perseus. "Why does it change?"

"What doesn't?" The question floated back, along with the slight wet pop of a knife being yanked free of flesh. "If you don't want this back I'm keeping it."

Artemis scowled and attempted to evaporate the silver in his hand. Her eyes widened as she realized she couldn't—and that Perseus was once again already walking away, leaving the snake-haired corpse planted facefirst into the stone. "But if you don't let it change, you're stuck. And the nightmare won't end. But you'll never get out. Eventually, you'll die. Just like all these monsters. You won't wake."

The goddess looked back up at the moon and sighed. She took a deep breath, letting the cold invade her throat and lungs, and closed her eyes. "Then how do I get out?"

His voice was everywhere and everything, a dissonant amalgamation of all tones and pitches coming from the edge of earshot and all the spaces between. A shrill scream in the distance. A relaxed conversation by her side. A cold whisper behind her neck. A rattling gasp under her blade. " _You find where the forest ends_."

She opened her eyes.

The trees were rusted bronze, made of riveted and corroded and dented plates. The twisted automatons were rootless, bolted to the steel earth, less than twice as tall as her and even thinner. The leafless branches were coated with dirty rainbow sheens that dripped and collected into pools of fizzing chemicals.

"That was faster than I expected," Perseus said from behind her. "Which is great and all, but I'd like help with this one."

Artemis twisted around to see him facing off a massive lion taller than the forest. She immediately drew her bow and loosed an arrow at its eye.

A snake whipped out from behind the beast and snatched the silver bolt from the air, which dissolved in its mouth. Another volley flew from her bow to kill the snake, but a goat head twisted around the lion's back and screamed at her, melting the arrows with a gout of flame.

"You distract it, I'll kill it," she commanded.

Perseus cackled. "Whatever you-"

The lion roared and pounced, slashing with its claws, and the two moved with it. Perseus ran straight in, ignoring another blast of flame that bathed his surroundings, liquefying the trees and igniting the puddles. Artemis leaped away, dodging venom spit from the snake.

If she was prey for this hunt, she was going to make the predators regret it.


	3. Sweet Dreams

_Dream on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death: / Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath! - William Shakespeare_

* * *

His flesh writhes. Fresh skin eats through the burns that envelop his arms and face.

The mechanical trees screech as they contort in the wind. There's the slightest scuttering …

At his feet, the chimera steams, wisps of acrid smoke leaching from the beast's acid ridden hide. He reaches out, and the fumes curl through his fingers. His hand ghosts over the massive flank, catching on one of the dozens of silver bolts. The fletching tickles at his palm and he tugs the arrow out.

A flash of moonlight reflects on the chimera's hide.

He drives the silver bolt forward, through the core of a crawling mech. The small spidering sputters sparks as its legs continue mindlessly, before finally shuddering to a stop.

Artemis snaps toward him, bow drawn and ready. Her eyes flit to him, then to the mech, then past him. She blinks. "Retreat."

He looks up just in time to see her run away, darting through the corroded forest before disappearing.

Behind him, the scuttering returns with a vengeance, a constant clicking of metal on metal swelling to deafening levels.

He draws his hilt, and a wave of absence pulses out. The cacophony of metal vanishes, leaving a dull ringing in his ears, and he turns around. A tidal wave of mechanical spiders stands frozen before him, stretching farther than the eye could see and taller than the trees.

Right.

Percy hurries away, not putting away the hilt until swarm is out of sight.

* * *

The bronze forest melts into lotus trees, the acrid smell of chemicals blown away by a hot wave of nauseating saccharine sweetness.

Then Artemis crosses his vision, running in from his right, just to slow to a stop and stare at the shock pink flowers. Artemis reaches up, not quite touching the flowers as her hand hovers around the petals.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Percy says.

She looks up, the edge of surprise in her eyes.

"They're as toxic as everything else, though," he continues, picking a small orange fruit off a branch. "In case you were hungry."

As he pulls his hand away, a leopard patterned serpent bites his wrist. He blinks, then twists his hand to grab its neck, yanking it. The tree shakes, dropping more fruit as the rest of the monster—a leopard body—also drops. He moves to step on its neck when an arrow cuts through his hand, slicing through the monster's neck at the same time.

"Thanks," he drawls, pulling out the arrow. The slit in his hand closes as he flips the arrow over, using it to spear the lotus he had mid-air and hold it up for inspection. "Not quite ripe, so I'll pass."

"What is this place, truly?" Artemis asks through gritted teeth. "How am I suppose to leave this forest if it won't let me? You said I don't belong here, will you help me leave or not?"

"Don't bullshit me," she interrupts when he opens his mouth, still smiling. "There are things too familiar here—I recognize things I can't remember. Why?"

Percy's smile remains fixed. "Dreams are the edge of reality but are still based on truth. Why should this nightmare be any different?"

"You asked before whether waking up was urgent." He flings the fruit off the arrow, spraying sanguine sap through the air. Then he traces along the tree, easily piercing the bark to let it weep more blood. "You tell me. What's so important that you have to get back to? Can you even remember?"

Artemis frowns, then flinches, bringing a hand to her temple. For a moment, she's still, and Percy almost thinks she actually remembers. But then her eyes roll up and she collapses.

"Right," Percy sighs, tossing the arrow away, where it skewers the skull of another serpopard behind the trees. "This will hurt."

He kneels own and adjusts her to let her lie properly. Then he clambers over her, making sure to kneel on both her hands. Finally, he pulls out the ice hilt and pushes it down into her heart.

With the whoomph of an implosion, color and sound breaks. Artemis gasps, golden eyes flashing open. One moment Percy is looking down at her colorless body, the next he finds himself fifteen feet away, staring up at a curtain of rotten brown willow trees.

"Yep, that's a new one," he groans, sitting up. He rolls his shoulders, trying to stretch the soreness from his back. He looks back, only to not see her. "Hey-"

Thick roots erupt from the earth, wrapping around his legs, while the branches above dip to encircle his arms and body with long ropes of moldy leaves. He flexes and frees one arm through sheer strength, only for more of the lashes to come down and lift him spread eagle off the ground.

The black soil roils, and razor-sharp grass sprouts forth, cutting into his ankles. Percy growls as they begin to saw through his flesh, his gut squirms—

The forest flares silver as a legion of silver arrows cuts through the trees, slicing up every branch and root and him along with them. But he's free, and he kicks his way out of the patch of blades. He glances around again to find Artemis silver eyes piercing him.

"Thanks," he grunts as the hundreds of lacerations vanish. Percy grins, which only grows wider when she looks away. "Saves me the trouble of getting _violent_."

She scoffs and starts walking away, stepping around grasping roots. A silver machete flashes from her hand, keeping the willows at bay. "What was the point of that?"

Percy falls into step behind her, taking advantage of her efforts. "The forest is insidious. It steals from reality then forces you to fight it, until you can no longer tell the difference."

"You're still not telling me how to get out." Her response floats back like a wasp.

Percy laughs.


	4. Do You Remember?

_A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality. - Yoko Ono_

* * *

When Artemis fell, she didn't remember how she arrived. She didn't remember what monster she was hunting, or even what season it was.

What she remembered was a forest of black ice, branches sharp and fragile and beautiful. She remembered a forest with trees of bound hay and wheat, oozing into swampy muskeg.

She remembered Perseus.

Perseus, with an earnest smile and an open demeanor, and kindness and humor in his sea-green eyes. Fighting back to back against basilisks and gryphons, working wordlessly in concert in the face of the eternal hunt.

Then her mind ignited with pain as memories tried and failed to assert themselves, as gaping vacuums screamed in their emptiness. The cold was so intense that it burned; the hollowness slowed her heart and lungs and body. It was as if the Pit itself opened within her mind and was dragging her in to also be forgotten.

And then the cruel and secretive monster came to save her, poisonous eyes swimming with malice. She was torn back from the nothingness to the nightmare, back from the colorless ice to find him sitting on her lap, pinning her hands to the ground, her heart warming beneath his hands. For the briefest moment that she met his gaze, Artemis thought that Perseus revived her only to ensure she suffered more.

Then she threw him off.

* * *

She would have appreciated staying in the willows a little longer. But by the time she'd spun around, the forest was once again made of stone.

However, the trees were not magnificent petrified sequoias but twisted stalactite pomegranate trees, malignant jagged jewels of lurid purples embedded in every surface as if some mockery of fruit.

And the new monsters were amalgams of creatures she almost remembered: giant bat wings protruding from hellhounds with one, two, four, six, twelve heads, but never three.

Artemis fended off the beasts without comment. There was no point in asking him questions when his answers were purposefully obtuse.

The forest was a nightmare. The forest was trying to kill her. The forest wouldn't let her go unless she stopped fighting. The forest had to change to let her go. She had to find the end of the forest to escape. The forest stole from the real world but wasn't real.

It was a jumbled mess, yet she knew he wasn't lying. It was an insight she attributed to her brother. But that same insight told her Perseus was deceiving her.

And while she hadn't remembered anything from the waking world, the fragmented memories she did recall shed new light on the situation.

Because now she knew she'd been here before.

Which meant she escaped this nightmare before.

The memories also explained how Perseus pushed all her buttons. How he so easily bypassed her stoicism to irritate her.

But the memories brought up more questions too. There was a personality difference, to say the least, and she needed to know more about this beast she now tangled with. So what brought about that change? How long ago was that? And given the previous apparent kindness, had he been more helpful?

She was a step ahead of him, though, because he didn't seem to suspect she remembered anything.

She could almost ignore the creeping chill settling at her heart, the traitorous voice in her head saying that she should tell him.

* * *

Perseus tore the last hellhound in half. The blood splattered across on his chest and vanished the next moment. He paused and looked up, off to the distance. "You've been quiet."

Artemis remained alert, not bothering to look up. While their surroundings were reminiscent of the Underworld, the sky was the only constant in this forest: absolute black, the moon, and dripping red clouds in the distance. "If you won't answer my questions, what's the point?"

"Good manners?" He shrugged. "You've been looking at me like I'm a piece of meat." He stopped and turned to waggle a finger at her. "I'll have you know that my flesh is just as toxic as everything else."

A silver blur sent the offending finger flying away through the forest, yet it was back in an instant to keep taunting her. Artemis jammed her knife into his wrist, sending his whole hand into a spasm. "Noted."

Then her attention snapped to the trees. The crystals were melting, revealing pumpkin-sized pit scorpions with beady eyes. There were hundreds of them, all with dripping stingers that were melting the rock trees into black sand.

"Right," Perseus said, and Artemis stilled. The underlying humor in his voice evaporated as if the inside joke he'd been telling was no longer funny. The knife in his hand is gone and in its place a hilt, a shard—

With not even a snap, every scorpion was bisected. A piercing frost settled on her skin as she looked over the massacre, scorpion halves twitching as if they had yet to realize they were dead.

The monster she accompanied sighed, the heavy breath like the gale that brushed by them. Artemis's grip on her bow tightened, and she smothered the instinctual shiver that begged to be released.

"Where were we?" Perseus yawned, right hand slipping into his pocket.

"You were being a right bastard," came a new voice, far too light and cheery.

Artemis whirled around to find another anomaly, a pale young woman whose movement made no sound and didn't seem to breathe. A goth, dressed in a black tank top and jeans and boots, kohl lining her eyes and a silver ankh hanging from her neck.

"Teleute," Perseus deadpanned. "How've ya been?"

"Peachy keen!" Teleute said, sauntering over to Artemis, who tensed. The goth leaned in up to Artemis's ear, bringing up a hand to cover what she had to say, hovering just out of touch—then spoke loud and clear, "Sorry about my brother, he likes to tease."

Artemis looked at Perseus to find all emotion drained from his face, lips sealed tight and eyes unreadable.

 _Brother?_


End file.
